Spock's Wisest Words

I have been a fan of Star Trek (the original series) ever since I was a child. The show means a lot to me on multiple levels, and I spent many hours in my youth watch and re-watching every episode. (And this is before we had these here newfangled VCRs and DVDs. You actually had to wait for a certain time of day when an episode, which you couldn't control, would appear. Get off my lawn!)

In my present-day house, in which I'm now the dad and I've got children of my own, the television is almost never on. Out of a combination of tradition and curiousity, though, I turn on the Thanksgiving Day "Parade" (which is mostly just commercials and promotional snippets from Broadway shows) for my kids to watch. Of course, in between very brief glimpses of the actual parade, there was a lot of time devoted to Black Friday this and Black Friday that, with consumerism blasting its garish, vulgar grasping palms of desire by way of advertisements.

Yesterday was a disturbing day for me on multiple fronts, and one of those fronts was my disgust at all the crap being pushed on both children and adults. One commercial in particular was from Toys R Us, highlighting the fact that their doors would open at 5 p.m. on Thanksgiving for all the brats to burst through the front, rush through the aisles, and demand that their parents pay for whatever boxes of stuff made in China that they wanted.

Now I was a kid once too, and I liked toys as much as the next child, but over the years, I have grown increasingly aware of the fact of how short-lived the pleasure of Getting Stuff is. Whether it's a toy as a child or a sports car as an adult, once you've actually got whatever it is that you thought you couldn't live without, well, it just sort of blends into normalcy.

Which brings me to Spock. In Amok Time, one of the great original episodes, Spock has to battle to the death with Kirk in order to score his Vulcan 'tang in the form of T'Pring. Near the end of the episode, Kirk is ostensibly dead, and Spock, the victor, decides that his Vulcan male rival, Stonn, can marry T'Pring. He says to him something which I've remembered my entire life:

Stonn. She is yours. After a time, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. It is not logical, but it is often true.

(FUN FACT offered by your favorite blogger: Arlene Martel, who played T'Pring, was, in real life, married and divorced no fewer than three times; so I suspect her ex-husbands would probably approve of Spock's wisdom).

I have thought of Spock's words many times. I'm not sure - - and I'm being very serious here - - that the world has always been as grasping, covetous, and wretchedly excessive as it appears to me now, or if I'm simply waking up to something that has always been there. But this entire season of buying crap is simpy grotesque to me. And the greatest irony of all is that, once all the wrapping paper has been shoved into landfill, the thrills will evaporate, the smiles will fade, and kids and adults alike won't be any more content than they were than before they had whatever that Thing is that had to be bought.

Wanting things is not abnormal... it's WHAT we covet that matters. Things we can take with us to the next world are what I want. A soulmate wife, loving children, the experience of art (especially music)... whatever of worth we carry around INSIDE us. The "toys", the money, the high-life that most people desire are mostly superficial, which is why they end up feeling bored, unfulfilled and always wanting MORE. They chase the dragon of greed, but never attain it.

If more people thought like you the GDP would be half what it is today, landfills would be half, peoples savings would be greater and everyone and the planet would be the better for it. The best things in life are free but one has to value and want those things instead of the ridiculous things in stores with wrappers on them. Especially the crap fom China made of plastics. Better to give one meaningful and significant gift which improves knowledge or adds real value to your life than to give a thousand trinkets.

The best things in life are rarely free. They are affordable once you have eliminated what is frivolous. Consider love and marriage. You must devote time, compromise, share your space etc. While these things may not be $$$, they are still a cost. Even knowledge has costs. If you are using the internet to learn rocket surgery, you need to devote a considerable amount of time filtering through useless information, then spend countless hours in study. Even the best things in life must be subjected to cost benefit analysis.

The best things in life are rarely free. They are affordable once you have eliminated what is frivolous. Consider love and marriage. You must devote time, compromise, share your space etc. While these things may not be $$$, they are still a cost. Even knowledge has costs. If you are using the internet to learn rocket surgery, you need to devote a considerable amount of time filtering through useless information, then spend countless hours in study. Even the best things in life must be subjected to cost benefit analysis.

Too many people don't realise that the only thing they really need thay already have between their two ears and the only thing they ought want in order to reach a modicum of contentment is to empty it of as much useless clutter as possible. That sort of idea once prevailed in China, now all the meaningless junk the world lusts for is manufactured there.

Yeah, every once in a while the pervasiveness of our collective insanity really hits me, and it's sad and scary as hell.

I really don't object to advertisements, in principle. However, television and radio programming, and now movie theaters, gas stations, etc. offer a relentlessly edgy amoral carnival barker atmosphere. I have had radios all over the house for many years, but they are virtually never on anymore, not even in the car. One TV in a 4 bedroom house of 5 people - strictly for selected DVDs or streamed internet content. Most corporate media feels like standing at the wrong end of an effluent pipe spewing wretched, dehumanizing, permanent-revolution propaganda - soft porn for the desensitized, prideful, lustful, covetous, and gullible.

While I generally agree with the author, some things/gifts do enrich a person.

A bicycle gave me adolescent freedom and adventures that have long stayed with me.
An Atari computer allowed me to learn programming and later networking and have a group of like minded friends.
Legos?! Who knows how much of my intellect was built, pun intended, by the hours I spent with them.
My Big-Trac was a huge eye opener of what was possible with computers.

When my friend bought one of the first apple computers, I lusted after it. After I bought one for myself, I loved it although I subsequently graduated to a PC. Cheaper. Some things are worth lusting after - others not so much.

"A wise man told me that we soon tire of the works of men, but the works of god are always treasured."

Not really. Most religions get abandoned after few thousand years. Greek, Paganism, Aztecs, Egyptian, Celtic, Norse, etc all ended up getting abandoned. The works of man, momuments built in those abandoned religions are still treasures (Pyramids, stone henge, machu picchu, etc). It wouldn't surprise me that at least some modern religions, perhaps all, will be abandoned in a thousand years or less. I am sure that participants of those abandoned reglions had just as much faith in them people do in modern religions.

I'll remember to use Spock's line on Christmas day when there are no presents under the tree. My wife will "Amok time" my ass. If you thought the fight between Kirk and Spock was intense just come on over and see how my wife throws me around the arena.

I have been touting that quote since the original episode and it is the best one in so many ways. I do beleive however that the direct reference to women is the most telling and the divorce statistics prove it !!!